Deception Island (9 page)

And imagine his relief, now. He could cut Holly loose, knowing he'd left no paper trail, and the story was too far-fetched for the media or authorities to believe, should she approach them.

Still, he had an awkward problem on his hands, with his daughter's kidnapping broadcast live on the internet. Maybe the truth had already come out and Jack was the only one who didn't know it yet.

He leaned back, supporting himself with one hand on the grass, cradling her foot with the other. Turned out she liked the contact, dammit, and not just because it fit her plans. It felt good to have someone touch her in a way that suggested he cared—even if only because he needed to keep her alive for his own reasons. Her body was happy to take what it could get. Didn't mean her mind had to buy into it.

“It's not something you can escape that easily,” he said to her foot, so gently it made something ping inside her chest. No one spoke to her like that. “It's still inside you, still eating at you. As tough as you get, inside you're still that beaten puppy.”

How the hell could he read her that clearly? Unless... She tilted her head. “We're not just talking about me here, are we?”

His eyes flicked back to find hers, fine brown lines bunching at his temples. For the first time he looked less than impenetrable. That was encouraging.

“I showed you mine,” she ventured, softly. “Did your parents give you hell, too?”

He frowned, his gaze barreling into hers for a full minute. A pair of dragonflies shimmered and shot through the air between them. She stayed quiet, setting her expression to neutral.

He broke eye contact, and gazed at the jungle bordering the clearing, slowly shaking his head. She guessed it wasn't the trees he was seeing. She didn't dare even breathe aloud.

“I don't remember my parents, don't know if I had brothers or sisters,” he said, finally.

She silently filled her lungs.
Breakthrough.

“We fled a civil war when I was a child and got separated, or so I was told. I figure they were killed. I got to a refugee camp, and became prey for whoever could find a use for me. I got involved in bad things.”

Her heart twisted. Jesus. He'd been as vulnerable as she was when Jasper came into her life—so starved of love and company she didn't recognize when it came with a hidden agenda. And she'd been an adult, a nineteen-year-old who'd already seen too much. Jack had been just a boy. “What kind of things?”

“A good girl like you wouldn't want to know.”

“But you became a good man. How?”

“Why would you think I'm a good man?” Bitterness darkened his voice. “I kidnapped you. I'm holding you for ransom.”

“You're putting a dressing on my foot. It's kind of ruining the whole Captain Hook image.”

He flinched and looked down at her foot, as if he'd forgotten. He let it go, and shuffled away.

She leaned back, her elbows on the table. “Or maybe you're just waiting for me to drop my guard and then you'll break out the nasty juice.” Not far off what Jasper did. Right there was a good reminder to keep alert, no matter how gentle Jack had been just now.

“I'll do what?”

“You'll get mean.”

“You'd better watch out, then.” He jumped to his feet. The sun had moved around and she squinted up at his towering frame. “It's shower time, princess.”

“What?” Heat struck her cheeks.

“For you.” A smile played at his lips. “Alone. I'm not that kind of pirate, remember?”

“Of course not. I didn't think you were... I wasn't meaning...” For a split second there she'd totally imagined him naked and wet—and pressed against her. Good grief.

He laughed. “You need to wash off any remaining toxins.”

Damn. He knew just what had been going through her mind. This seduction really was flowing the wrong way. “You need me out of the way for five minutes. Would this have anything to do with your secret hiding place for a certain sat phone and laptop?”

“Like you said, trust is an
issue
between us. I want to see the media chatter about your disappearance.”

Crap.

“You've been looking for the comms, haven't you? Believe me, you won't find them. Bathroom.” He pointed. “I'll clean this up. We'd be
crétins
to let this food spoil, and we don't want to attract vermin. A slow loris would literally kill for a leaf of spinach.”

She hoisted and retucked her towel, stacked a bunch of plates in her arms and headed to the cabin, going easy on her foot. “There's something making you do this. Someone.”

“Making me tidy up?”

“You know what I mean.” She glanced over her shoulder. “You're not denying it.”

“Let's just say it's in everybody's interests if everything goes to plan this week.”

Which it wouldn't. No way was that ransom going to be paid. But surely a search would be launched, assuming the senator wouldn't just come clean and risk the political fallout.

Meanwhile, here they were, swimming in the lagoon, picnicking on the lawn, about to do the washing up and then some googling. Oh, God, what if the internet revealed that the real Laura was safe? She stumbled on the steps. He caught her elbow, as she steadied her load. Her towel gave. With no hands to spare, she could only let it slip to the ground.

“Don't worry, princess. I won't look.” She stood to the side as he passed her on the narrow step, his chest brushing the damp lace covering one of her nipples. It immediately tightened, the traitor. She caught her breath.

“I don't know if I can handle it,” she said, quickly. “Watching the coverage on the net, I mean.”

At the screen door, he turned, an eyebrow raised. “I thought we'd established you're not the sensitive type.”

She maneuvered her elbows to hide her body's absurd reaction. “I thought we established you weren't going to look.”

He quickly turned, bending slightly as he battled to keep his own armload in control. Interesting. So maybe he did feel the chemistry between them. She'd feel better if it wasn't just her long-neglected hormones spinning out of control.

“Seriously,” she said. “Can we not google?”

“Shower,” he ordered huskily. “I'll tell you the highlights.”

He disappeared into the cabin. She stood there, paralyzed. Damn. Could she distract him, invite him into the shower? No—too soon, too obvious, and it would just delay the inevitable, not prevent it. Surely, if the truth had been revealed on the internet, someone would have turned up to tell Jack by now—and possibly to kill her. She had to take a gamble that her cover was still intact, that the senator was still trying to figure out a course of action, that she still had time to drag Jack over to her side.

She'd know soon enough.

Chapter 9

Seated at the picnic table, Rafe connected the laptop and sat phone. He brushed a thread of spider silk from the phone battery and clipped it in. Laura would never think to look in rocks directly behind a web guarded by a hairy palm-sized spider. Even now, the creature would be recreating the broken strands. It'd do the same after he put the gear back shortly. Nature covering human tracks.

No response from Flynn. Not what he'd hoped for, but just as he'd expected.

He typed in
Laura Hyland
and
Jasper
. A few fan sites brought up random hits, but nothing that would indicate a boyfriend by that name. The woman had vulnerabilities from her childhood, so it would make sense for her to come under the spell of the wrong man. But she'd grown up in the public eye, and somehow the media had missed a boyfriend she was so obsessed with that she'd tattooed his name on her back and left it there the entire ten years she'd been with Logan? And somehow everyone had missed the fact her father had abused her? He tried
Laura Hyland
and
tattoo
. It brought up a hit on a fan who'd tattooed her face onto his shoulder. But nothing about Laura having a tattoo. She had to have been photographed in a bikini. How could no one have noticed?

He got up to the
b
of
Laura Hyland
and
bikini
when she emerged from the villa, dressed again in the too-short shorts and the blue tank that echoed her eyes. He hurriedly closed the page and opened a fresh one.

“Find anything?” There was a skip in her voice. Perhaps she
was
choked up at the thought of reading about her kidnapping. She was good at hiding her fear, but she had fear, all right.

“Just about to search.”

The bench squeaked as she sat beside him. If he relaxed his knee a fraction it would touch her smooth thigh. He made a show of moving, as if getting comfortable, and settled farther from her. She shuffled closer. Damn. Her hair smelled of coconut.

“You're lead story on CNN,” he said.

“So are you.”

The top photo was a split frame—Laura on one side kneeing Uriel's face, in a fuzzy still from the yacht's above-deck webcam, and Rafe on the other, snapped as he sprinted across the deck in a blur of black clothing. His shoulders relaxed. They couldn't identify him from that.

“That was a nice move,” he said.

She rubbed her knee. “I'm out of practice. Still feeling that one.” Her posture had deflated a little, as if the coverage brought her relief, too. Was she flattered that her kidnapping was such a big deal? Twenty-four hours ago he'd have believed that of Laura Hyland, the vain publicity seeker. But he didn't believe it of the woman sitting far too close to him right now. That woman had her head on straight.
You can't believe everything you read
, she'd said. No kidding.

He scrolled through the story. The false trails Gabriel's men had laid were working—the official search was centered in the wrong place, assuming they'd escaped by boat alone. There'd been sightings of Laura in places he'd never heard of. No one was looking for a couple of newlyweds at a honeymoon resort a hundred kilometers from the kidnap site.

“You're quite the sensation,” he said. “Candlelight vigils all over America.”

Further down was the photo Gabriel's soldier had taken of Laura after the kidnap, blown out badly by the flash, and a picture of her at a glamorous function, her eyes ringed in her trademark dark makeup and her skin pale as paper.

“You look very different without makeup.” He had an urge to touch the freckles scattered over her face. They didn't deserve to be hidden.

“Do I?” She touched her cheek, her forehead screwing up. She didn't know how beautiful she was? Had her father made her feel that worthless? Rafe couldn't abide any injustice, but an adult who tormented a child...

“I mean that in a good way.”

“Oh.”

“Your eyes look bluer without it. You look healthier. I'll never understand why beautiful women wear so much makeup.” Simone would never leave the house without lipstick on, even when they were going windsurfing.

Her eyelashes flickered down. “It's a mask,” she said, so quickly he could barely pick out the words. “You'd wear makeup, too, if photographers were outside your door 24/7.”

“Would I?” he said, a smile pricking at the corner of his mouth.

“Well, maybe not you, but...” She grinned, the flirt returning. A cover for the hurt? “Plenty of men wear makeup.”

“Another thing I don't get. Ready to scroll down?”

She nodded. A second later she stiffened. He read quickly, catching up. Her father had called a press conference and announced he wouldn't pay.
“America does not negotiate with terrorists. My baby girl will come home, alive, I promise you that. But these evildoers will not get their way. They will feel the full force of American justice.”

Great. So Rafe was a terrorist now, as well as a kidnapper and pirate. A day earlier he might have felt a pang of pity for the senator—after all, Rafe was doing to him what Gabriel was doing to Rafe. But not now, not after Laura's confession.

“He's bluffing,” Rafe said. “Governments will always deny they pay ransoms, to be seen to discourage other kidnappers. He'll be negotiating privately.” He'd better be.

“You think?”

“Believe me, a father would do everything he could to get his son back.”

“Son?”

Merde
. “Daughter.”

A beat of silence. “Holy shit, Jack. How old is he?”

“Who?” His chest tightened.

“Your son. They've got a hold over you, something big. I've been wondering what it is. Not your wife—she's out of your life—and you said you don't have other family. They've got your son.”

“Enough.” He shut down the laptop and switched off the phone. How could he make such a basic mistake? She was getting under his skin. He'd never let anyone in, not even Simone, to her endless frustration. So why did he feel as if he could spill his secrets to Laura, of all women?

He wasn't used to people showing an interest in him beyond what he could do with a gun. Maybe he'd spent too much time around legionnaires since Simone had died. In the Legion no one asked questions, no one gave a damn about where you were from or what you'd done in the past. Everyone had something to hide. When you joined, your history was wiped. That's why he fitted in, when he couldn't fit in to normal life.

“You've been blackmailed to do this—to kidnap me—haven't you? To get your son back.”

“Get back in the bathroom,” he said, shoving the equipment in a thick plastic bag, his back to her.

“What does it matter if I know this? In fact, isn't it better that I know this? It explains
a lot
.”

“The less you know about me, the better. I can't afford to have my identity revealed.”

“You're safe there. All I know is that your name is not Jack, you're not a pirate, you speak French and English and another language I can't identify, you're a captain in some military organization and you have a son.”

Imbécile!
He needed to shut his mouth. “Bathroom, now.”

“Jack, maybe I can help, maybe we can work together. We don't have to be enemies.”

He spun. “We are enemies, whether we want to be or not. The only way you can help is to do what I tell you.” Big blue eyes blinked. He'd roared the words, lost control of himself. She held her stance strong, her gaze steady and glittering with defiance. If he stepped half a foot closer he could capture her pink lips, press her body against his once more, feel alive again, human again, wash away his fear for Theo and his anger for Gabriel and escape into this woman who played him and stood up to him and intrigued him and made him feel things he hadn't felt in a long time. “Bathroom, now,” he repeated, his voice as dark and loaded as he felt.

She cocked her head, then silently turned and strolled to the villa, her spine straight as a legionnaire on parade. He exhaled. Wise woman.

* * *

Holly's heart thrummed as she closed the bathroom door and leaned on it. So that explained the haunted expression that occasionally flickered over Jack's face—his son had been dragged into this mess, and Jack was being forced to keep Holly captive. His silence was as good as written confirmation. What would happen to the boy when the senator didn't pay? What would happen to her, and to Jack?

Should she come clean to him? She jammed her fingers into her hair. What would that achieve, besides making him even more worried about his son—and furious at her? He might seem honorable, but he was also trained to kill, and they were on opposite sides of this. She hadn't had much experience of fathers who loved their children, but Jack was evidently one of them. What would he do for that love?

She'd thought she was in love, once, and she would have done anything Jasper asked. She had, in fact—which had launched the chain of events that were likely to end with her death on this false Eden, wherever the hell it was. And even if Jack didn't kill her, someone else from the gang behind the kidnapping likely would.

Keep it together
. For now, at least, her identity was safe, going by the media coverage. It wasn't over yet. And she was getting somewhere in her strategy. She'd seen Jack's desire, she'd felt his anger as she'd related the story of her father, she'd sensed his competing urges. Just how far was she prepared to take this?

She'd done plenty more shameful things to survive. He'd said it himself:
we are enemies, whether we want to be or not.
One more con, and never again
.
There had to be a better life waiting on the other side of this—she just needed to figure out how to get there, alive. She owed him nothing—less than nothing.

She dragged her fingers through her scalp to her neck, unleashing the smell of coconut, a carefree scent at odds with the danger her life was in. Man, this would be so much easier if she despised him. Trouble was, she was beginning to admire more about him than just that goddamn Renaissance statue of a body.

She of all people should know that falling for the wrong man left a woman vulnerable. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to mine information from him. When he'd let slip the danger his son was in, she'd had to shut down her urge to reach out to him, to remind herself that she was playing a dangerous role and he was her adversary, no matter how much pain he was in. She'd always had a weakness for another underdog—growing up, on the streets, in prison. Top dogs, not so much.

Could she outright seduce him, to turn him from enemy to ally? That's what Jasper would tell her to do. If she'd learned one thing from him—the hard way ultimately—it was survival at any cost.

She sure wouldn't have to fake her desire for Jack. Pretending to him that she felt something would be easy. Pretending to herself that she didn't? That was a whole other story.

* * *

For Rafe, the afternoon passed painfully. Without a weapon to constantly clean and maintain, his fingers itched to be busy. He dragged a Windsurfer out of the shed, but there wasn't enough of a breeze to even get it out onto the lagoon.

Every time Laura came near he backed off and zipped his damn mouth, replying to her attempts at conversation in grunts. He couldn't risk giving anything else away. When she tired of bugging him and went out snorkeling in her bikini he made it a personal challenge to look anywhere but at her, to shut down any thoughts that weren't directly related to Theo's survival. Even when she lay on a mat on the grass two meters away and smoothed sunscreen
all
over her body he managed not to look. Eventually she got bored, found a fishing line and reeled in a couple of good-sized yellow snapper, while he stole a look at the internet. No word from Flynn. Not prepared to trust her with the knife, he did the filleting.

After an age, the sun began to drop. Bats glided overheard and squawked and fought in the coconut palms. He grilled up the fish and they ate at opposite ends of the picnic table in silence, both facing the darkening lagoon. Even then, his peripheral vision and battle-honed hearing gave him hell, feeding his brain unwanted information about the graceful way she folded and unfolded her legs, the slap of her hand on taut skin as she chased away mosquitoes, her frustrated sighs at his reticence. His every nerve seemed to buzz at her slightest move, his every muscle tensed at her slightest sound, sweat sprang to his chest at every waft of that damn shampoo.

It was as if denying himself the pleasure of looking at her cranked up the reaction—overreaction—of other senses. But at least he wasn't betraying any more secrets. The important thing was to keep Theo locked away.
Au combat, tu agis sans passion. In combat, you act without passion.
This had become a combat of sorts, if only inside his body and mind.

He downed the last forkful of fish, wishing they had more, and stood, abruptly, to clear the plates. She rose at the same time and reached for the same plate. He found his gaze impaled on hers. Under the warm light of sunset, her skin glowed. He could swear more freckles had sprung up across her face than when he'd last looked. His resolve failed him, his eyes drinking her in. He stood caught in her magnetism like an imbecile.

“Hello?” she said, waving her palm in front of his face.

He flinched and returned focus to stacking plates. She laid a firm hand on his wrist.

“You cooked, I'll clean,” she said.

He extricated his hand, and didn't make the mistake of meeting her eye again. “I'll have a swim. Don't answer the door to any pirates.”

“Depends how polite they are.”

She stacked a pile of plates on her arm like a seasoned waitress, as she had earlier that afternoon. Where did a woman who was accustomed to being waited on learn to do that? No doubt she'd hosted her share of elite parties, but surely it'd be the staff cleaning up? He added it to the tally of surprising discoveries about her, then tried to forget it, along with everything else about her that wouldn't let his brain be still.